


the au where they fall in love and stay together always

by sarahenany



Category: DreamWorks Dragons (Cartoon), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 16:31:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahenany/pseuds/sarahenany
Summary: Follows on from Lorika'sListen to the Mustnt's, Child.Gobber loses another limb... and gains something else.





	the au where they fall in love and stay together always

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TamerLorika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TamerLorika/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Listen to the Mustn'ts, Child](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18309302) by [TamerLorika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TamerLorika/pseuds/TamerLorika). 



> This is significantly less poetic than the work that inspired it, none of Tamer's "Stoick, son of Oskar" and beautiful lyrical prose, it's straight-up fix-it fic. For the hopeless romantics among us all.  
> (If you haven't read the fic that inspired this one, do. Now. It's better than this one, I promise knowing it will be kept.)

Note: The first line is stolen verbatim from TamerLorika's story.

* * *

 

On Berk, the first limb you lost was celebrated as a rite of passage.

The second was just a bloody nuisance.

Nobody celebrated anything about Gobber losing his hand, especially as the raid had been a particularly bad one, and many in the village were left nursing their dead or wounded. Of course, Gobber was unaware of all this, and remained so until long afterward; he was left burning up and muttering with his nightmares about it having been the same dragon who’d taken his leg for a fevered fortnight after. He didn’t know where he was or what had happened as the fever ate away at him from the inside out: all he could do was cry out in cold and frustration when wet compresses were interfering with his pleasant warmth and tepid baths making him yell out insults at whoever had the effrontery to make him so chilled and miserable that he couldn’t just _die in peace,_ dammit.

Then there was a period of blessed sleep, nobody dragging him out of the warm darkness and the knife of pain in his left arm fading to a dull ache. That was when the nightmares receded and the unhappiness and self-recriminations started, with a future of nothing to look forward to. Bloody useless he’d be, no more good as a gods-forsaken blacksmith and probably have to work on the fishing-boats or something, no use to Stoick and Valka anymore in the home they shared either and – he’d seen poor blokes with their silly-looking hook hands, he’d always admired how they worked them but he _wasn’t that sort,_ bad enough he had to stump around with the stupid peg leg and Gods knew how long it’d taken to get used to _that,_ and now he couldn’t even strap on his damned leg without help and he should have “…died. Should have fucking died and been done with it, be a burden to everybody else and…”

“Shush now,” a voice rumbled in his ear. “We didn’t snatch you out of death’s jaws just to have you givin’ up on us. That’s not the Gobber I know.”

“The Gobber you know had two hands,” he snapped back, petulant.

“No, you had six,” came a soft voice from the other side of him. “Both yours, and two sets extra, mine and Stoick’s. Five from six isn’t that bad, now, is it?”

 _That_ gave him pause, and he blinked. Awake. He was awake.

In the same bed he’d shared with Stoick and Valka, before. Before all this mess… “How long?” he croaked out.

A feminine chuckle. “ _Long?”_ The word was drawn-out, and naughty. “You think it’s time yet for jokes about how the dragons didn’t bite any of _that_ off?”

There was a huffing sigh from his other side, like a laugh caught before it could really start. “Not sure he’s all there yet. You all there, old friend?”

“How…” Gobber swallowed. His throat was parched, and he choked on nothing.

Hands, as promised, steadied him on both sides. He was lifted and supported on a broad, warm body. _Stoick,_ his own body told him before his mind could start up. A wiry, callused, _cool_ hand palmed his cheek. Cold metal – _goblet –_ pressed against his lips. He drank like there would never be any more water in the world. Against him, Stoick crooned comfort, not really registering in his brain but sounding something like _you’re all right now, love, you’re safe, you’re here, you’re with us,_ and smoothed his hair back like he was a babe.

He choked on the water, tears springing to his eyes. Valka smoothly took the mug away, and a cloth patted the moisture off his face. It smelled of lavender. His eyes stung again.

“How…” he cleared his throat, acutely conscious that Stoick was smoothing his hair back. “H—how long since the raid?”

“Just on three weeks now.” It was Stoick who answered. “Scared us half to death, ye did.”

A clank as Valka set down the mug. “D’you remember what happened?”

Gobber took a long, shuddering breath, taking stock of things slowly. Soft bed beneath him. Solid bulk of Stoick’s body against his side and back, thick beard tickling his arm—the arm that… that was still there…

_The roar, swinging the axe. Flames everywhere, blocking the night. Striking with the axe—the Nightmare lunging—a moment of shock—staring through the flames at the stump of his own arm, blood just starting to well from the ruin of what was once a hand—_

“…there, there.” It was Stoick, not Valka, doing the murmuring. “You’ve had a shock. It’ll take a while. Easy now, love. Easy.”

There it was, that word again, and he would have asked, but he… _liked_ the mistake. It would go soon enough, once he was in no danger of dying. For now, it almost made up for the missing limb, to have this illusion.

“Shh, shh.” Hands running up and down his thighs, cupping his knees. Valka. He realized he was shivering. Had remembering affected him that much? For answer, his body convulsed again in another shudder, and this time it jarred his arm and he gasped.

“It’s all right, it’s all right... Val?”

As Valka’s hands disappeared from his legs and he listened to her bustling about, a clinking sound that told of Gothi’s vials and jugs, he let his head fall back and gritted his teeth against the sudden stabbing in his left arm, the pain in the hand he had seen – _seen_ with his own eyes – a bloody stump. “It’s gone,” he heard his voice scrape out, “isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so, old friend,” Stoick murmured. He was half-wrapped around Gobber, Gobber could tell now, bracing his back and his right side, leaving all his injured left side completely free. Probably scared to touch it. _Disgusted, maybe,_ a little voice in his head whispered, although it made no sense, no-one had cared for his missing leg but _them,_ but perhaps it was too much, this time… “The—the elbow’s still there,” Stoick went on, trying to sound chipper and his voice breaking with the attempt. “It—A little time and you’ll be as good as new, just you see…”

“Oh, shut it, Stoick.” Valka plopped down on the side of the bed, stirring something vigorously. “Give the man a chance to grieve. He can’t very well let himself be sad with you being so disgustingly cheerful!”

And Gobber _sniggered._ He couldn’t help it; it was just too funny. Stoick shared his laughter with a grateful chuckle as Valka poured Gothi’s disgusting potion down Gobber’s throat. “I do still have a working hand, you know,” Gobber protested as she fed it to him and then wiped his face again, like a week-old babe.

“Yes, yes,” Valka said tartly, “manly Viking, splits rocks with his head, tame seas and slay dragons, and more of th’ sort. Just do us a favour and stay put this time, there’s a good lad? Or I’ll have Stoick tie you down.”

The heat that flared through him _shouldn’t_ have – and _dammit,_ Valka’s eyes should _not_ narrow in understanding like that! Nor should she – oh Hel – be _smirking!_ “Noted,” she grinned, wide and feral, “and placed under advisement for a later date.”

“What are you talking—” Stoick began, and then choked. _“Oh.”_

Thank all the gods, Gothi’s potion was already making Gobber sleepy, and soon enough he would forget all about this embarrassment. They were both probably just being over-solicitous because of his injury, anyway. He gave a little murmur of contentment as Stoick eased him down to the pillows, so gentle, so loving he could almost imagine… but then the shock of his missing hand chilled through him again, how everything was going to be _different_ from now on, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the sting of tears, not caring if his face was touched with something that smelled of lavender.

* * *

Things moved quickly after that first awakening. It wasn’t _quite_ as bad as he’d feared: there was a sizable stump left below the elbow, and he might actually have an idea how to use that – hands were for holding hammers and tongs and so on, weren’t they? Well, what if the hammer and tongs were built right into the replacement? If he had a base to screw them into… These thoughts and more ran through his head in the long idle days of recovery, and it got to the point where he asked Stoick and Valka to bring him some paper and charcoal from the village and he sat and sketched some preliminary designs.

It was harder with one arm, of course: he counted himself lucky that he had an elbow to lean on for balance, but he couldn’t do that just yet, the stump still tender. Still, he was managing to potter about the house just fine, working a little bit where he was allowed to lend a hand – and even, now another two weeks had passed, managing to make jokes about lending _a_ hand, and so forth. He still slept far more than a man in full health would, but Stoick and Valka didn’t seem to mind, allowing him to depend on them far more than he should – Stoick even supporting him to the outhouse and helping him do his business when he needed it. It should be mortifying, but Stoick somehow kept it matter-of-fact and blunted the worst of the embarrassment. They allowed him to help with small chores, thank the gods, which helped him not feel _entirely_ useless.

Well, except for one thing. Jokes about all one needed being one’s “trusty right hand” notwithstanding, he didn’t quite see how either Stoick or Valka could want to be with a cripple without _two_ limbs. They’d been more than understanding and accommodating of his disaibility when he’d lost his leg, but now… he didn’t blame them for not touching him in _that_ way even once since he’d woken up. All he had left, he thought with grim humor, _was_ his trusty right hand: couldn’t even help with his left anymore. (Well, unless he created a prosthetic for, um, _things:_ but he didn’t see wood or iron doing the job…)

Setting down his charcoal, he sat back in his chair and flexed the fingers of his one remaining hand. The smells coming from the kitchen told him that supper might be ready come sundown: there were about three fingers’ worth of daylight left. Time to finish drawing a schematic, or…

“Time for a bath?”

Stoick and Valka were suddenly standing before him, bucket and washcloth in hand. Gobber shuddered. It was cold outside, and even though there was steam rising from the bucket, the thought of undressing and standing by the trough held _no_ appeal. He raised his hands. “Maybe later?” They look unwavering, and he tried puppy-eyes, although they’d never worked that well on Stoick or Valka – maybe slightly more on the former than the latter. “It’s a little too much work, just now.”

“Oh, you won’t be doing any work,” said Valka. There was something about the way they exchanged a look, just a flicker of a glance, and smiled. Stoick’s cheeks were turning pink and he was looking at the bucket in his hand as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. What was going on?

“WE THOUGHT…” Stoick boomed, then shut up with a squeak. “Er—that is to say, we…”

Valka laughed, and it was like a river chuckling over rocks in the deep pools around a waterfall. “We want to take care of you,” she said. “Will you let us?”

Gobber blinked. It sounded like they were talking about more than just bathtime. “I…” He reached up with his left hand to rub the back of his neck, finding out too late that he didn’t have a left hand anymore. He felt himself slump, defeated. “I don’t know if I can…”

“You don’t have to do anything.” This time it was Stoick. His voice was so deep. And yet there was a sliver of hesitation in it, like a hairline fracture. “Just let us…” he cleared his throat. He made a helpless gesture with the hand not holding the bucket. “May we?”

And gods, Gobber had never been able to refuse him anything.

* * *

“Just sit down by the fire, there’s a good lad,” Valka instructed him like a child. He must have been more out of it than he’d thought – while he’d been sketching, they seemed to have stripped his bed of its mattress and covers and placed it by the fire-pit in the center of the house, a broad wooden bench perfect for bathing someone on. Except he was _not_ a _child,_ and he didn’t need to be _bathed –_ he’d lost an arm a month ago, that didn’t mean he was _helpless._

He tried to tell them as much as they seated him on the bench with touches entirely too tender to be meant for him, he’d shared their bed before but – well all _right_ maybe when he’d first lost his leg they’d treated him like that valuable breakable stuff Johann brought sometimes, like a touch would shatter him, but he was _fine_ now, an arm was _nothing…_

He was still protesting when Valka started undoing her dress, Stoick pulling his tunic up over his head. “what—what’re you doing?” he asked. His brain seemed to have stalled in the middle of the road, like a yak that had decided to go just so far and no further.

“You wouldn’t want us to get wet clothes bathin’ you, would you now?” Valka asked brightly, now just in her shift. Then the shift was off and no underpinnings, and gods, he didn’t desire women but Valka was a _beautiful_ woman, standing there like Freyja had just stepped off a branch of Yggdrasil. Shoulders, breasts, stomach, thighs, she stood straight and strong, a hunter goddess, a pearl in her nakedness. If she wasn’t the mate of the most beautiful man in all creation, Gobber would have thought her wasted on him. But now Stoick was shucking his under-tunic and _gods, he_ wasn’t planning to get _completely_ starkers, was he? Were they both planning to give Gobber a heart attack?

Apparently he was, and they were. The light of the fire played yellow and orange on his freckled skin while the window cast sheets of pearly light on the planes and angles of his body in the pale light of dusk, and Stoick jumped gracelessly on one leg pulling down his breeches, then fell over backward trying to get his boots off and it was still the most beautiful thing Gobber had ever seen, even as the house shook as if it were under attack by a Gronckle. “Thor’s balls, man,” Valka laughed agreeably, “we’re tryin’ to seduce the poor lad, not make him fall off the bed laughing.”

Stoick sat on the floor in his smallclothes, grinning but blushing, looking up at them both with green eyes, and Gobber did _not_ bend to kiss him. It wasn’t his place.

Then Stoick knelt up, and took hold of the hem of Gobber’s tunic, and eased the fabric upward. Naked like him, Valka did the same on the opposite side, both of them so, so careful of Gobber’s missing hand. He wanted to tell them it was all right, it didn’t matter, he could take a little pain, but there was something fucking _reverent_ in the way they were doing this, and for the world he wouldn’t shatter the spell.

When the tunic was off, Valka dipped a washcloth in the still-steaming water. It had lavender blossoms floating on the top, Gobber noted idly, unable to take his eyes off the pair of them, the firelight playing on their bodies as they glided around him, graceful like the times he’d watched them dance in the village square, aching, and holding the ache inside. Their dance was around _him_ now, Valka dragging the warm washcloth across his shoulders and Stoick following up with a soft, dry towel, like washing something precious. Something that—that _meant_ something to them. And Gobber knew he meant something to them, but not like this, not this way that they were acting and he wasn’t—“What is this?” he asked, trying to sound authoritative and demanding but the question coming out a rasp.

“W—we’re…” Stoick choked, the words catching in his throat. “W—uh…”

Valka laughed, water chuckling over stones again. “We’re bathing you, you ninny.” The cloth was warm and sure over his back, cutting through what he was sure were swathes of dirt left behind since the day of the battle. Unless they’d bathed him before that. He wouldn’t put it past them. He was dizzy and confused. Stoick followed Valka again, drying him off before he could be anything but warm and refreshed and comforted, bracing Gobber with one big hand on his chest as he scrubbed the towel across his back. It was like heaven and like something he could never have. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the feel of Stoick’s fingers on his breastbone soothe and heal him before he pushed the thought away.

“I don’t need…” He swallowed. He didn’t want to reject their care – they were doing so much for him and he wasn’t ungrateful – but… this was too much, and he wasn’t… he shouldn’t… “I mean, I can do it meself.”

“Since when?” Stoick’s voice was more sure now, coming from somewhere over his shoulder as he worked on Gobber’s lower back. “I’ve seen ye make a mess of a bath with _both_ hands.”

“That was just the once!” Gobber retorted, Valka’s giggling helping him stay grounded, else he might float away on their tender touches. “And if I recall, _you_ were the one who let the yak out that broke the trough!”

“This sounds,” Valka said, “like something I want to hear about.” She gave Gobber’s back a final thorough rub, then dropped her cloth in the bucket, Stoick still patting him dry with a lot more gentleness than Gobber would ever have given him credit for. “Later.” She came around to Gobber’s front and kissed his chin, light and playful. “Definitely later.”

“No.”

Both of them reared away from him like his touch had burned them. “Do you not want this?” Valka asked, and she sounded so… disappointed. Forlorn, almost. And Stoick—Gods _no_ he never wanted to see that look on Stoick’s face ever, let alone be the one who put it there. _Never._

 _“No,”_ Gobber said, clenching his fists—and he only had one fist and that made his eyes burn. “No, it’s not… I don’t mean it like that.” He looked up at them desperately. “Why are you _doing_ this?”

Stoick and Valka shared a look, and it was so intimate that his heart broke a little more than the cracked clay pot it already was, sitting there useless in his chest. There was nothing for it: he would have to get away, ungrateful or no, because he would eventually break, seeing glances and touches and things he wasn’t ever meant to be a part of. Then Valka looked up at him and said, “Because we love you.”

Gobber clenched his one fist tighter and fought the urge to bolt to his feet. _They don’t mean it,_ he told himself, _they don’t mean to break your heart, it’s just their way of speaking._ “I love ye both too,” he said, as lightly as he could manage. “Doesn’t mean I can…” He trailed off, because he couldn’t very well speak of his heart with _them._ “Ye don’t want to be burdened with a cripple,” was what came out. Disgusting self-pity. Had he _no_ pride at all?

Stoick’s closed fists flopped open, hands lying limp on his knees. He looked so vulnerable, kneeling naked on the floor in only his smallclothes, beautiful beginnings of a belly spilling over his thighs, a trail of hair wending its way down his chest to his navel, every line of his body speaking _disappointment._ Gobber tried to meet his eyes, to find out _what the hell was going on,_ but Stoick was looking down at the floor for all the world as if he was looking for something he’d lost.

And Gobber startled as he was smacked on the side of the head. “ _Men,”_ huffed Valka from next to him. “Hopeless, completely hopeless. Listen, you.” Stern eyes fixed Gobber’s. “You are going to lie down and let us take care of you whether you like it or not,” she planted her hands on her bare hips and glared at Stoick, “and _you_ are going to _talk_ to him without beating about the bush!”

Stoick’s eyes flickered to the bouncy brown bush between her legs, and she smacked him on the side of the head too for good measure. Gobber guffawed. “Oh, shut up, you,” Valka snapped. “Lie down.”

“Unless you really don’t want to.” Stoick rose up on his knees and met Gobber’s eyes. “We wouldn’t make you do something you weren’t all right with.”

Gobber inhaled deeply. Of course, it was Stoick’s remonstration that would kill him, finally, with kindness. He could no more refuse that earnest glance than he could grow back his missing hand. So what if his heart cracked a little more in the process?

“Wait,” said Valka. “Tell him.”

Cold fear clawed up Gobber’s chest. This was it, then—the goodbye he’d always been half-expecting, not waiting for, but knowing it would come, sooner or later. This tender care was their way of saying farewell. They’d cared for him while he was injured, he’d expect no less from friends, but all good things must come to an end, and they—

He flinched as he was smacked on the side of the head. _Again._ “Shut up,” said Valka.

“I didn’t say a word!”

“You were thinking loud enough to be heard on the other side of the isle.” She folded her arms, squishing her breasts under them. She glared at Stoick. “Tell him.”

Stoick swallowed, staring like a yak in a dragon’s sights. He looked at Gobber, up at Valka, back to Gobber again, down at his lap, and muttered, “Uwuhyu.”

“Try again, dear,” Valka said kindly.

“Ah, I er…” Stoick swallowed again. Gobber idly wondered who would win the contest, mouth or gullet. They seemed locked in mortal combat. Stoick swallowed. “I. Erm. You, Gobber, uh, you see. We’ve been friends for a long time.” Both Gobber and Valka were staring now. “I ah. And one does sometimes take things for granted, you see.” He looked helplessly up at Valka.

“You’re doing great,” she smiled.

“Take your time,” Gobber volunteered helpfully.

“Ah. Yes. Well…” Stoick rubbed the back of his neck. He was beautiful, yes, but he was also Gobber’s best friend, and right now all Gobber wanted was to help him out. “I… You. In the last raid.”

The chill hit Gobber again. This was about the hand. He knew it was. “Look. I can take care of myself just fine,” he said. “You don’t have to give me some sort of farewell party—”

Valka roared.

No, really, she did. One moment she was standing there watching and the next she had let out a roar that would do a Monstrous Nightmare proud. “MEN!” she hollered when she was done roaring. “What this silly git is tryin’ to tell you, Gobber my love, and making a right balls-up of it he is, too, is that it took the last raid to hammer into his _thick head_ how much he _loves_ you!”

The word rocked Gobber to his core. He remembered Stoick’s soft words when he’d been half-conscious, and shook his head on instinct. “Of course he does, we’re best friends—”

Valka roared again, and this time even Stoick flinched. “Of all the bloody-minded IDIOTS!” She rounded on Stoick. “Tell him what you said when he was hanging between life and death. Go on, tell him.”

Stoick looked up at Gobber, and his eyes were wet. “I told her I’d rather it were me.”

Gobber’s breath caught. It was just as well, because Stoick wasn’t done. He looked down at his knees again. “I said to Val… you never know what you have until you lose it. Or almost lose it.” Dry-mouthed, Gobber could only listen. All he could see was the top of Stoick’s head, his face curtained by his shoulder-length red hair. “It took you losing _another_ damn limb before I saw what had been staring me in the face all this time. That I can’t live without you.”

“…you great fat nit,” Valka finished lovingly. Whether it was in reference to Stoick or Gobber was unclear.

Gobber swallowed. “I don’t think you know what you’re…”

“You think you didn’t talk in your sleep? When you were feverish?” Stoick’s eyes met Gobber’s again, refusing to look away, and Gobber could see the courage of the man who had wrenched the head clean off a dragon in Stoick’s gaze. He was so awed by that courage he forgot to be terrified at what, exactly, he had said in his sleep, but it didn’t matter because today was the day for revealing secrets, it seemed. “On and on it was about how you didn’t belong, about how you were… gods, I don’t even know, an outsider…”

“All kinds of silly things,” chirped Valka, who seemed to be treating this thing as a giant joke. But no, he realized as he looked in her eyes—she was _confident_ in the outcome, although where she got that confidence Odin only knew. She met Gobber’s eyes unflinchingly, and sat down on the bed beside him by his good arm, Stoick still kneeling at his feet. “You said all kinds of silly things, and all the while this great big lug here sat there and cried and pleaded with all the gods to spare you and not take you from him now he’d found you.”

 _Found you._ There was something in the way Valka said that that made Gobber’s breath catch. He looked back to Stoick, and there was something in the way he set his jaw that told Gobber the next words would be forced out of him. “All this time,” Stoick said, “I knew Valka here had my heart.” Gobber felt rather than saw Valka nod encouragingly next to him. “But I never knew you already owned my soul.”

Gobber opened his mouth, then closed it again. He choked down the instinctive denial. It was a confession too damning to be met with anything but reverence. Still… “Do ye know what you’re saying?” he said slowly. “Because if you’re not sure…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t think he could stand to let Stoick, let them both, know what it would do to him if Stoick had mistaken his own heart.

Stoick rose a little higher on his knees. He leaned forward. Slowly, giving Gobber plenty of time to draw back or change his mind, he kissed him.

It was soft and sweet and everything he’d never, ever have associated with his lifelong friend, the man he’d loved since before he knew what it even was to love another human being. Stoick let out a little whimper and palmed Gobber’s cheek, and when they pulled away he was crying in dead earnest, the flush from his reddened eyes painting his face and neck down to his collarbone. “I thought I’d lost you,” he rasped, voice hoarse. “I thought I’d lost you and you’d never know, and there wouldn’t be a damned thing I could do about it.”

Gobber choked on his own emotion, about to drown in it. He had no idea what to say, and was saved from saying anything by Valka’s smirking tones. “And Odin’s hairy balls, he would _not_ stop whinging about it. Cried enough for a Scauldron by the time you finally woke up, and all I’m tellin’ ye is, you better not get in danger again. Stoick bawling sounds worse than a yak with a stomach-ache, and you know what _that_ sounds like. I’m telling you.” She looped an arm around his shoulder and kissed him soundly on the cheek. "If it means I’ll have someone else to share listening to him bawl, then sharing his heart’s the best thing the big lummox ever did.”

Gently taking his chin, Valka kissed Gobber, just as soft, just as sweet, but with far less reverence and far more camaraderie. “And I get me two strapping young lads instead o’ one. With luck, you two might even be able to keep me sated.”

“Val!” Stoick was beyond red, well on the way to purple.

Gobber chuckled. “Always was a prude, he was,” he said in an aside to Valka.

“Good thing he’s got us, isn’t it,” Valka murmured back, and the way she said ‘us’… His gaze flickered back to Stoick, needing to be sure. And if he had ever doubted… it was all there in Stoick’s eyes.

“Let us—” Stoick choked a bit, but cleared his throat and persevered. “Let us take care of you. There’ll be other times. But tonight is just for you.” Gobber frowned. He wasn’t sure if he could let himself be bathed like an infant… And then Stoick said “Please, love,” and that was it.

* * *

They laid him down on the wooden planks, pulled off his leggings and smallclothes. Stoick lost his own breeches and stood naked and limp before him. Valka retrieved the lavender water from where it had been keeping warm by the fire, and they started again, on his chest this time, Valka washing and Stoick following it up with the towel and pressing kisses to Gobber’s skin afterwards. They both paused on the same side to wash his stump, and then they both kissed it, over and over, everywhere that wasn’t too hurt to touch, looking him straight in the eye as they did so. “You’re beautiful, you silly twit,” said Valka, and Stoick said “You’re beautiful, love,” and Gobber wondered how often Stoick was going to say it, now he was no longer afraid of saying it.

They worked their way down his outer thighs and legs, washing and drying, and when they got to his stump, they both kissed it with far less trepidation than his still raw and inflamed arm, looking long and steady into his eyes as they kissed his stump over and over, smiling all the while. They finished his feet, and then it was time to wash between his legs. Valka stood back, arms folded, smirking, and let Stoick rub the lavender-scented warm towel over cock, balls, thighs, inner thighs, on and around the buttocks, all places Stoick had touched before, and all as shocking as the first time. Gobber was half-hard when Stoick was done, and Stoick stood to show him that he was fully hard, with a rueful half-smirk as if to say _See._

Gobber reached out; it was second nature, really, to be giving Stoick a hand, even though he only _had_ one hand, and was he getting a little dizzy? “None o’that,” Valka said, batting his hand away gently. “We said today was just for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he managed to grumble as Stoick slipped a pillow under his head.

“Right, this is where we _ought_ to tie you to the bed,” Valka said, looking like she believed she was making any sort of sense – tie him to the bed, indeed! – “but you’re still not healed, you see.” Stoick was standing carefully to the side, still with a hard-on about which he was doing absolutely _nothing_ , and had the whole _world_ gone _crazy_ or what? “So here,” said Valka, confirming that she really had gone crazy. She sat back down on the side of the bed and took Gobber’s good arm. From her braid she pulled a red ribbon and proceeded to tie it around his wrist. “Can you get that off with your teeth?”

Gobber tried and found he could slip it off quite easily. “Yes, but I don’t quite see…”

“This was Valka’s idea!” Stoick interjected, unnecessarily and quite loudly.

“Oh yes, pretend you didn’t get all hot and bothered about having him helpless at our beck and call to have your wicked way with him,” retorted Valka. “Don’t believe that prudish act,” she whispered loudly to Gobber, “it’s all an act. He’s wanton as they come.”

_“Val!”_

“ANYWAY,” Valka said, focusing back on the ribbon. “As long as that stays on, you’re ours to do with as we command. You can take it off, o’course; but if it’s on, you do as we say.”

Gobber found his jaw dropping in what was probably some kind of a flabbergasted smile. “I never knew you were such a… such a…”

“Wanton?” grinned Valka. “Strumpet? Whore?”

“I _had_ been going to say _fiend,”_ Gobber managed, “or _evil genius…_ The Stoick I know wouldn’t be this creative!”

Valka leaned back, arching her back to show off her bust and flipping her hair. “There are _reasons_ the poor lad married me.”

“Gobber…” said the aforementioned poor lad, who had been shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot throughout the explanation, “if you’re not, um, if it’s not your cuppa, we can find something else to…”

Gobber narrowed his eyes. _“Coward.”_

He had had no idea what Stoick would do. He certainly would not have expected Stoick to fall to his knees by the bed, kissing and licking and worshipping his body like it was the most precious thing in the world. He arched back, letting out a cry.

“I’ll _show_ you coward,” Stoick said, and if his voice was rough, neither Gobber nor Valka held it against him.

“Remember,” said Valka, “you can’t be doin’ anything for yourself, long’s you have that ribbon on. You have to let us do all the work.”

If he had not just been through a hellish fever and known just what it was to have a fever-dream, Gobber would have _definitely_ dismissed this as a dream: Stoick, his best friend, the one he had loved since forever, kissing over him and murmuring endearments. But he had just spent the better part of three weeks burning up with fever, and he knew what was real and what was not. Still, it was enough to drive a man out of his mind, watching the firelight playing on Stoick’s pale, almost translucent shoulders and the top of his red head, his cock bobbing between his legs, just visible beneath his belly, his knees a little reddened from where he knelt on the flagstone. He reached out to touch Stoick, perhaps reciprocate. “Now, now,” chided Valka. “You’re still wearing the ribbon. You want it said Gobber gave up so easy?”

Gobber clenched his fists – _fist, dammit,_ he had to stop feeling the hand that wasn’t there – and then he let out a shout as Stoick took him into his mouth. His one remaining hand flew up without conscious thought and he bit down on his knuckle to keep from bursting into tears. Stoick had _never_ taken him into his mouth before, and that more than anything convinced him that Stoick _meant_ it. Valka… Valka was sitting on the side of the bed, not fingering herself, just holding Gobber’s shoulders and rocking him. This was less like a fuck and more like a… a _ceremony._

Stoick was clearly a novice, and that was just as well, because the knowledge of _who_ and _what_ this was might just make Gobber come apart at the seams on the spot without needing to add skill to the mix. Gobber clutched at the side of the planks he lay on, and felt the heat and the suction and listened to the beloved voice as Stoick murmured and muttered his way through a glorious, inept blowjob, and watched as Stoick valiantly let him come in his mouth and swallowed, too. Then he raised his head, grinning, looking proud… and there was something else in his expression that made Gobber’s breath catch. A spark that hadn’t been there before.

Then he licked his lips, and tears sprang to Gobber’s eyes.

“Next time,” Stoick said, rising and sitting opposite Valka on Gobber’s other side, mindful of his injured arm, “or whenever you’re up to it, we can do this without the ribbon, and we can give Val her wish and have you top me.”

Gobber choked. “Stoick—”

Stoick puffed out his chest, which had the effect of almost pushing him back off the bed. “You’re saying I’m p’raps not man enough to take it?”

That was enough to force a splutter from Gobber. “No—Yes—I—You…”

“We’ll take that as a yes, then?” Valka said sweetly. “I’m so looking forward to watching.”

“All right, all right,” Gobber said – Hel, if this was a dream, he might as well play along. He reached across himself with his good arm to touch Stoick’s cock—and was stopped by Valka tapping the red ribbon.

“Not today,” she said. “Today is for you.”

“We’ve used you before,” said Stoick, face serious.

“No, you haven’t,” Gobber remonstrated. “I knew. You never led me on.”

“We did, though. If you’d…” Stoick shuddered. “All I could think of,” he said, staring into the fire, “was that you were going to be taken from me and I’d never let you know where you belong because I’d never known it meself.”

Valka reached across to palm Stoick’s shoulder. Stoick bent to kiss Gobber. Gobber tasted himself on Stoick. The fire crackled. The smell of food was in the air. It was warm. Gobber realized he was falling asleep. He jerked awake—

“Shh, love.” Stoick. _Stoick_ had said that. “It’s not a dream.”

“You’re with us, now,” Valka said from his other side, like a promise. Like a vow.

Gobber blinked hard, trying to cling to consciousness nevertheless. “Just nap,” said Stoick. “We’ll wake you when food’s ready, all right? Need to get your strength back. For…” And he blushed. He actually _blushed!_ “For, you know. Things.”

The last thing Gobber saw before drifting into a blissful slumber was Valka’s smirk above him.

 


End file.
